The Addiction
by LooneyLovey
Summary: What happens when Emily goes through a trauma and doesn't come out of it as the woman they used to know? What will the team do? More importantly, what will Hotch do? Rating will change in later chapters. In the process of updating/revising 07/07/12.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Why was he looking at me like that? I'm fine. There's nothing wrong with me. I am completely fine. In every sense of the word. Those were just some of the thoughts running though Emily Prentiss's brain as she stepped into her boss's office to find a man in a business suit smile slightly, his way of greeting her she presumed.

"Prentiss," he said, rising slowly out of his seat to greet her.

"Hotch," her reply was stiff and formal. Controlled and not like the woman she used to be, he mused sadly.

"Why don't you have a seat?"

Prentiss looked at him wearily, what did he want?

"I'd rather stand thank you very much."

"Prentiss ... Emily," there was a new voice this time, a much gruffer voice. Emily turned to look around and came face to face with not one, but two men.

"Rossi, Reid. What are _both _of you doing here? Better yet, what am I doing here?" she asked, startled by the sight of three of her closest work colleagues, whom she hoped she could still dare to call her friends.

All three men knew what was going to happen, what had to happen and all three knew that it wasn't going to be pretty.

"Emily, I really think you should take a seat."

"And I really think I shouldn't." If she sat, she'd be more vulnerable, she couldn't escape, she had to escape if things got messy. She'd find a way, but she couldn't take them on, maybe she would have stood a chance individually, but not as a group.

"Emily, are you even listening to me?"

"Well Hotch," she sneered his name with as much contempt as she could muster, "why don't you tell me why I'm here instead of babbling on about some stupid nonsense that happened in the past."

Hotch looked over at the two men sitting on the couch. It was now or never, he just whished he didn't have to be the one to deliver the news.

"Emily, it's over. We know."

"Know what." They could all see the confusion on her face, but they could all see the underlying guilt and panic that hid in the depths of her eyes. She had become too easy to read. Not a good thing when confronted with three highly intelligent profilers.

"We know about your addiction."

And with that declaration, Emily Prentiss fainted.

**Do you want to see more? Let me know and if you do, you'll get a cookie. :) **


	2. 6 Months Earlier

**Disclaimer: I do not own criminal minds, or any of the characters in the show.**

**~.~  
**

**6 Month Earlier. **

"Prentiss, can you meet me in my office in five please."

"Sure Hotch ... is everything okay?"

Of course everything wasn't okay, Prentiss cursed. Her boss had just asked her to come up to his office in five; he wasn't asking anyone else to do that. Just her. She looked nervously around the bullpen, Reid and Morgan had gone out for coffee so it was just her, Rossi and JJ left.

With a sigh, she sat back down and pulled the closest file towards her. Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds until she found out what he wanted, she mused.

She opened the file, and without realising it those four minutes and thirty-seven seconds which seemed so long, passed in the blink of an eye.

~.~

"Take a seat Prentiss," he said, as soon as she'd closed the door to his office.

"Certainly Sir."

They sat in silence.

In her head, she mulled over the past six months wondering what she had, or hadn't done to warrant being called up into his office. While from a distance he sat, watching her eagle eyes dart around the room trying to make sense of the current situation, the same eagle eyes he had come to admire.

"Hotch?" she asked tentatively after five minutes had passed in silence.

"Yes?" he said, now reluctant to meet the eyes only moments before he had professed his admiration for.

"Would you, ah, would you mind telling me why I'm here?" she asked uncertainly.

He didn't answer.

He looked at her, wondering how he was going to tell her the truth.

"Prentiss ... Emily," he said after some hesitation on the use of her first name. "I've received an order from Strauss."

Oh god, she's going to fire me, she's found a reason to. I'm gone, she panicked.

"Whatever you're thinking, it's not that," he muttered, wishing the situation wasn't so dire then he could smile at the sudden expressions of panic crossing the usually stoic agent's face.

"Then what Hotch, you're scaring me now. Tell me," she demanded.

"Emily, Strauss wants you to go undercover."

"Undercover ... Hotch-"

"I can't change her mind about this Emily, its effect of immediately, and you're to be debriefed tomorrow by Agent Cristie."

"Do you ... Do you know what it entails?" she asked, her voice numb with shock.

"No." His reply was short and to the point. He didn't know, he wanted to, but he didn't know. He couldn't help her.

And that fact him killed him a little inside every time she gazed up at him. Her eyes taunting him with the unspoken truth that she was now in over her head.

~.~

**Present Day **

"You knew she'd do this Hotch, didn't you?" Dave murmured, as he bent down to pick the fallen agent up.

"That she'd faint, no. That she'd take it badly, yes."

"What are we going to do?" Dave asked, in the glum silence.

Hotch helped him lower Emily onto his couch, the same one Dave and Reid had been seated in moments before.

"What we planned we were going to do. We can't change course now."

The three men looked down at her in silence; she didn't deserve the hand that fate had dealt out to her, no one did. She was just a woman, their woman. One of their own. One of their one who had been hurt, used, and left in her time of need, and they were the ones who had to pick up the pieces of her broken soul.

"I think," Reid started, after the silence had become too morose, "that it would be best if she had round the clock care, that is until she's stable enough to be by herself. She shouldn't be alone. Not in the state she's in."

There were no statistics he could give; no studies he could quote that could make this situation seem any better, so he didn't even try. He just didn't. Emily was the big sister he'd never had, and the friend he'd always longed for. And now she was a broken woman, unfairly burdened with the cruelties of a life he'd never wish upon anybody.

"Shouldn't she be in a hospital?"

"No," Reid replied.

"No?" Hotch questioned, not sure if he had heard him correctly.

"No, the care she needs can be provided at home, in a hospital it will only be worse. Especially for someone like her."

"Reid, what do you mean someone like her?" Dave inquired, sitting on the edge of the couch. His hand softly brushing a stray strand of black hair away from Emily's face, completely unaware of the look of jealously Hotch shot him.

"I wasn't sure if you had, obviously not now, but there's something else going on."

"What Reid?"

"I'm not sure," he explained, annoyed at the inadequacy of his answer, "but I know there is. I can feel it."

Dave and Hotch looked at each other. Though they didn't want to admit it aloud, Reid was right. They _had _noticed there was something else, as well as her addiction, that was bothering her.

"Who will she stay with? Would we take it in turns?"

"No, the change in person and in scenery would make her even more unstable, more so than she is now. Though she's not openly displaying it," and at their look he added, "to the untrained eye, if you look close enough the signs are there. The constant fatigue, the jitteriness, the mood swings, the weight loss, and her irritability. You saw how she was just now."

The three men fell into an uneasy silence once more.

Shadows crept across the carpeted floor.

Reid ran a nervous hand through his hair.

Dave looked at the woman on the couch, his heart filled with a heaviness he longed to get rid of.

Aaron shifted his weight from one foot to another, and then began to pace. "We take it in turns. I'm not saying we leave her, I'm saying that we all stay in the same house – her house, she'll feel more comfortable there, but take it in shifts so we can all get some food and rest."

Dave and Reid looked at him.

"Strauss?" the former questioned.

"Damn Strauss, she's the one who got Emily into this mess in the first place. The least she can do is give us the time off to care for her."

"The question is; who's going to tell her?" Reid murmured.

"I will," Dave announced "I'll go and see if I have some weight with her. And if that doesn't work, I'm not against going above her and pulling some strings. Emily would do it for us," Dave trailed off, suddenly uncertain of just what he was getting himself into. "Reid, how much ... how bad will this be for her?"

"Worse than anything she's ever experience," he stated with a note of finality.

* * *

**Can anyone guess what's going to happen next? **

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	3. The Politician's Face

**Disclaimer: I do not own criminal minds, or any of the characters in the show etc.  
**

**Also, what did everybody think of 'Lauren'? I'm not ashamed to admit I had tears in my eyes a few times, though I do wish it was Hotch that found her, and not Morgan. **

~.~

If anyone were to come across Dave Rossi in that particular moment they would know that he wasn't a man to be messed with. He gave off a facade of calm, but as he stalked the corridors of the BAU people parted for him.

As he approached Strauss' office, he saw a younger agent scuttle away, as if he were too afraid to tell him that that she was busy, but Dave didn't care if she was. He opened the door to her office and was greeted with a stern glare from the woman in question, who was currently on the phone.

"On minute please," she said to the person on the other end of the phone.

"Erin."

"Dave," she greeted.

"We need to talk."

She looked at him, mirth playing on her features, "That's something you say to partners and ex-wives Dave, not your boss."

"I'm serious, Erin," he almost growled.

"So am I, Dave."

Without an invitation, he sat on the chair opposite her, legs out in front of him, arms resting on his thighs. Seeing that he wasn't going to go until they spoke, she ended the call.

"I'll get back to you Nick, give me an hour- no I know, I will. Bye."

This, her directness, was one of the many things he admired about the woman in front of him.

"_What_ was so important that I had to end my phone call early Dave?" she said, stressing the first syllable in the hopes of asserting her dominance over the stern man sat in the chair opposite her.

The next two words he said would shatter those hopes.

"Emily Prentiss."

Dave saw something shift in her features; she was no longer the woman he saw when he first entered her office, but a politician, ready to play all her cards in an attempt not to get caught in a web of lies so carefully spun, that they had no ending.

"I see."

"No, Erin, you _don't _see. Don't go pulling all of that political crap with me. Emily Prentiss. Talk."

He saw the change in her countenance as soon as it happened, the raising of her brow, the slight curve of her lip and the minor tremor of her left hand all spoke volumes to the profiler.

"It's classified," she said simply, as though it justified everything but Dave saw through it, her mask was slowly slipping away.

"_Classified ... _cut the crap Erin," his voice rose steadily as he spoke. "Hotch told me everything. I know, I know that you thought this would be the perfect opportunity to get rid of her, but guess what?"

Erin shifted in her seat, the action showing her discomfort at the conversation.

"Hotch, Reid and I won't let you. You've been playing dirty for years now and it's time someone put a stop to all this nonsense. Yes, we have a history, but what you've done to that girl has destroyed any feelings I every held for you Erin. You've truly become the monster everyone says you are."

Throughout his less than impartial speech, Erin felt the unmistakable signs of tears at the corners of her eyes.

"Dave," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "I never meant to put her through that. You _have _to believe me, it was never my choice. The order came from higher up, it's not something I'm proud to admit, the fact that I didn't fight against them. But, what would you have me do? In my position, what would _you _have done?"

Dave looked confused.

"What do you mean Erin; we all know you are the one who sent her off for the operation."

"What? No, I was never- how could." She took a breath and started again, "As unhappy I am with the team I would never knowingly put _anyone _through what she's been through. No, Emily was the one who volunteered- insisted that she be the one to carry through with the operation."

"I still don't follow Erin, what do you mean she insisted? She knew what the operation entailed?"

"Yes, I thought you all did. Counterterrorism came to me asking for an agent for an undercover operation that would last no longer than a month, two if you counted the amount of time needed for training. I told them that they would have to speak with the current Unit Chief and they assured me that they would. Did you really not know any of this?"

"No, carry on Erin; I still don't see why you neglected to inform us."

"Because I thought you knew Dave. The next day I had them back in my office telling me that there was no need to talk of the matter again, in fact I was forbidden from mentioning it, and that the Unit Chief had been notified that Emily Prentiss had put herself forward for the job, effect of immediately. Had I known-"

"And you didn't think to question them any further?"

"No. In my line of work, I'm sad to say, that things like that happened on a weekly basis. Not all departments are co-operative and many, like the BAU, hold secrets of their own."

Dave sat in silence for a few minutes, mulling over what he had just heard. Emily had chosen to go into danger, why? Nothing made sense and she wouldn't willingly ... unless.

"Erin, when you first met with them did they say anything that made you wary of them?"

"Dave, I'm wary of everyone who comes in asking for an agent for two months."

"So they didn't specifically say that it was Emily who had to take the job?"

"No."

"How could she have known though? Not even Hotch knew of what had happened until she had come back, after de-briefing."

"That seems like a question you will have to ask her yourself, speaking of which; how is Agent Prentiss, Dave?"

"Broken," was the only reply which came from his lips.

He rose out of his seat, ignoring the calls from behind him. There were too many things he had to consider now, too many questions left unsolved for his liking.

Had he turned back from where he has just come from he would have seen Erin let out a sigh before dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

~.~

"We need to wake her up Hotch," Reid whispered from his vigil by the couch.

"Why can't we let her sleep a little longer, you just said-"

"I know what I just said."

Hotch stared at the man in front of him. He was no longer the kid who walked into the bullpen this morning, no longer the boy who showed everyone his latest magic trick, and no longer the youngster who blushed when JJ walked by. Spence Reid was now a man.

"We need to wake her up, and I need to talk to her, alone."

"Reid, I don't think-"

"Hotch." He turned to look at the man, and Hotch saw lines on his face which weren't there previously, worry lines. "I know what it's like, and while her body is still full of the drugs I need to talk to her, to explain, to-"

"I understand Reid; I'll give you twenty minutes."

And he really did, if there was anything Hotch understood it was that sometimes ten, or in this case twenty minutes, were needed in order to sort out things before others become involved.

"Thank you."

As soon as he hear the tell tale click of the door he turned back to the broken woman lying peacefully on the couch, oblivious to what she was about to face.

"Emily," he called, "Emily you need to wake up for me, we need to talk."

No response.

"Emily," he said, a little louder this time, "Emily we need to talk."

It worked; he saw the flutter of her eyelids, and braced himself for the conversation to come.

* * *

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